The Price for a Holy Priest

As a 15-year-old girl, Berthe began praying at every Holy Mass for the celebrant, “My Jesus, do not allow your priests to displease you!” When she was 17 years old, her parents lost everything they had in a failed business venture. On 8 December 1888, Berthe’s confessor explained to her that her vocation was not to enter a convent but to stay at home and care for her parents. Although she accepted this sacrifice with a heavy heart, Berthe asked Our Lady to intercede that Jesus might call a zealous and holy priest in the place of her religious vocation. “You will certainly be heard!” assured her confessor.

She could not have known what would take place just 16 days later: A 22-year-old lawyer, Dr. Louis Decorsant, was praying before a statue of the Sorrowful Mother. Unexpectedly, he had an inner certainty that it was not his vocation to take the girl he loved to be his wife and to establish himself as a notary. He understood very clearly that God was calling him to be a priest. The call was so clear and urgent that he did not hesitate to give up everything. Upon finishing his studies and his doctorate in Rome, he was ordained to the priesthood in Paris in 1893. At the time, Berthe was 22 years old.

That same year, the newly ordained, 27-year-old priest celebrated Christmas Midnight Mass in a church outside Paris. At the exact moment Berthe was participating at Midnight Mass in another church, and solemnly promised the Lord:

“Jesus, I will be a sacrifice for the priests, for all priests, but especially for the priest of my life.”

During exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, the young woman suddenly saw Jesus hanging on a large cross and Mary and John standing beneath it. Then she heard the words, “Your offer has been accepted, your prayer heard. Behold your priest… you will be able to meet him one day.” And Berthe saw that John’s features resembled a priest, but one she did not know. This priest was none other than Fr. Decorsant whom she would recognize at their first encounter—some 15 years later in 1908.

An encounter led by God

Berthe made a pilgrimage to Lourdes where the Blessed Virgin confirmed, “Now you will see the priest whom you asked God for 20 years ago; you will meet him soon.”

That same year, she made another trip by train to Lourdes, this time with a friend of hers. A priest got on at the station in Paris trying to find a place for a sick woman. It was Fr. Decorsant. His features were those which Berthe had seen on St. John’s face 15 years earlier. She had prayed frequently and offered all of her physical suffering for him. After a couple of friendly words, he left the compartment.

Exactly one month later, Fr. Decorsant also made a pilgrimage to Lourdes because he wanted to entrust the future of his priesthood to Our Lady. With suitcases in hand, he met Berthe and her friend. Recognizing the two women, he invited them to Holy Mass. When Fr. Decorsant elevated the Host, Jesus interiorly said to Berthe, “This is the priest for whom I accepted your sacrifice.” After the Holy Mass, Berthe was surprised to see that the “priest of her life”, as she called him from then on, was staying in the same hotel as they were.

A shared task

Shortly thereafter, Berthe was able to speak to him about her interior life and another mission that was entrusted to her—the promulgation of the consecration to the Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart of Mary. Fr. Decorsant felt that this precious soul had been entrusted to him by God.

He accepted a position in Belgium and became a holy spiritual director for Berthe Petit as well as an untiring support for the realization of her mission. Theologically sound, he was the ideal person to maintain a correspondence between Berthe and the hierarchy of the Church in Rome. For the 24 years until his death, he accompanied Berthe Petit in her expiatory vocation; she was often very sick and suffered especially for priests who had left the priesthood.